A FEDERAL minister in Pakistan’s ruling PML-N on Monday (15) announced that the party’s supreme leader and deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif will return to the country from London next month, ending a three-year self-exile.
“Former prime minister Sharif will return to Pakistan from London in September. Upon his return, the PML-N will not let him go to jail,” federal minister Mian Javed Latif told a press conference in Lahore.
Latif’s announcement comes days after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan claimed that efforts were underway to bring back Sharif to the country under “some deal”.
Latif said Sharif, 72, should come to Pakistan as a “level playing field in Pakistani politics is not possible without his presence”.
He blamed the former chief justice of Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, for disqualifying Sharif in a “frivolous” Panama Papers case.
Interior minister Rana Sanaullahm said that “certain amendments” might be made through Parliament to undo the lifetime disqualification of the three-time prime minister.
An ailing Sharif has been living in London since November 2019 for medical treatment after the Islamabad high court allowed him a four-week reprieve. He was serving seven-year imprisonment in the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore in the Al-Azizia corruption case before his departure.
